James Van Dyne

🏃 We had Field day over the weekend at Leo's school. Thankfully, the weather cooperated. The skies were blue, it wasn't too hot, and there was a cool breeze. Leo was very excited and did well. He placed second in his race (and only then because he looked to the side at the last seconds) Well done!👏. Just as important as placing well is he was positive about his placement and his effort. Nothing like his original races in pre-school where he just nonchalantly walked once it became clear he…

🇬🇧 If you follow my full RSS feed, you'll know I was in the UK last week. As I was busy with work I decided to combine the past 2 weeks into a single post.🖼️ Despite all of my visits to the UK over the years, I never managed to make it to The National Gallery. I wish I had gone sooner. It reminded me of art history in college. Such a concentration of great art from throughout the ages and they just let you see it. I found it quite moving.🇯🇵 Outside of the museum on that day in Trafalgar Square…

📍 National Gallery Incredible. My art history class in college coming to life. Location: London, Greater London, United KingdomComment by email

📍 London Heathrow Airport (LHR) Nice flight. Good to be back.Location: London, Greater London, United KingdomComment by email

📍 ANA LOUNGE LHR bound. Keep tradition. Location: Tokyo, Tokyo Prefecture, JapanComment by email

🔗 Ownership If I ask you “can you own this?” or “can you take care of this?” or “are you on it?” — what I’m doing is I’m asking you to own it, to own the solution of a problem from end to end. From “we have a problem” to “we don’t have to think about it again.” A great example of the kinds of things you need to consider when you own a thing. There's heaps and they're all important.Comment by email

🪙 It was Silver Week last week, like Golden Week, but in September instead of April, and not every year, only every 4 - 6-ish years. I bridged the gap with holiday and had, including weekends, 10 days off in a row. I needed that.🎂 I turned 41. We went for separate cakes rather than whole this year because a whole cake is too much cake for 3 people. I went for a Mont Blanc and while it was really good, it was so unbelievabely rich. I only needed half.🎮 Growing up and in college I owned a few…

📍 MOKICHI BAKER & SWEETS 香川店 Location: Chigasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture, JapanComment by email

Fixed maps in Tanzawa with this PR. Mostly done by OpenCode with local running gpt-oss while I was out playing DragonBall Divers with Leo. Machines doing the grunt work, letting me focus on the important things. Gotta love it.Comment by email

🗺️ My maps have broken on my site and I need to fix them. Truth is, it didn't just happen this week. But blockage was inconsistent enough where I wasn't sure if it was actually broken or a transient error. The mapping code hasn't changed in years, so will be a good one for me to dive into and upgrade while I'm there. ☔️ A typhoon came and went. It skirted along Tokyo and dumped 2.5x the usual monthly totals of rain in 24 hours. While we were fine, this amount of rain isn't normal. Naturally it…

🗡️ I was very wrong to guess we had another month left in Tears of the Kingdom. We had a few more days. Which is to say, we beat Tears of the Kingdom after 2.5 years! When Leo first beat Ganon, he/we went in with a "this is just practice" mindset, and yet he kicked his butt. Such a good game.⚔️ Lining up with the 40th anniversary of Zelda, Nintendo has announced dates for and released gameplay footage of a Zelda themed Switch 2 and a remake of Ocarina of Time. I have never been more tempted to…

📍 Starbucks Coffee and a pumpkin scone Location: Fujisawa, Kanagawa Prefecture, JapanComment by email

🗡️ After a couple of years, but we finally got the master sword in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. I think we've still got another month or so in the game. 📚 Always thinking how can we foster a love of reading, I don't know why it took me so long to realize I should embrace Leo's current boom and get books about that. Embracing the Zelda boom, I picked up an Ocarina of Time manga. And he's already finished it just 2 days. My next task will be to figure out how I can transition from comics to…

🍫 As we're reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory before bed, I tried to see if Leo would watch the original and to my surprise, he watched all of it! He's a huge fan of the oompa loompas. As we're still reading the book, he's remembering the dialogue from the movie and repeating it.🍂 We had the first states of autumn in Kanto over the weekend with a low of 20 degrees. It felt fantastic and, despite me not drinking pumpkin spice lattes, I found myself wanting a pumpkin spice latte. It's…

⚽️ Ted Lasso is back on (🎉). I'm very glad it's been renewed and given he's coaching the women's team in Richmond, it opens an entire new storyline. The first 3 episodes have been fantastic.🍕 We had one of Leo's classmates and family over pizza and it was a success. It was nice to be able to talk with other foreign parents about school, raising families in Japan and the like. I also have a sudden unexplained urge to visit Sri Lanka. Maybe a good use for the miles I've been accumulating.🧽 The…

🔗 They're Made out of Meat Rather than say something was/was not written by AI, should we instead say it was "made by meat 🍖". I kinda like it...Comment by email

💤 Jet lag coming back was brutal. Waking up at 2am after 5 hours sleep feeling fully rested is great...until about 3pm. Fully covered now though.🐪 Since Leo went to the British Museum and saw the ancient Egyptian artifacts, he's been on a bit of (his first!) history kick. To encourage this wider range of thinking, we found that a museum with high quality replicas in Yokohama called Mystery of Tutankhamen and made a visit. It was pretty cool. While looking about I also learned that Leo knows how…

📍 ツタンカーメン・ミュージアム Location: Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture, JapanComment by email

Travel Europe by Tram is the perfect show when it's 4am and you're jet lagged. Well done NHK 👏Comment by email

🇬🇧 English classes went well for Leo. He is motivated to learn and speak English. While playing Switch at the hotel, he even started speaking to himself in English, "I hate lynel... because they are strong", which is perhaps the longest sentence I've heard him speak in English. By the end of the program he was playing with kids in the park, as kids do.🛝 The Diana Memorial Playground re-opened and we were able to visit the opening weekend! I hadn't realized that Heer's bench was directly in…

📍 Singapore Airlines SilverKris Lounge Heading homeLocation: Hillingdon, Greater London, United KingdomComment by email

📍 The Engineer Love a pub Location: London, Greater London, United KingdomComment by email

📍 Diana Memorial Playground Opening weekend after it being closed for renewal. So good! Location: London, Greater London, United KingdomComment by email

📍 Hamleys A visit to the toy store for a job well done. Location: London, Greater London, United KingdomComment by email

✈️ We flew to the UK – work for me and a week long english course for Leo. The flight itself was smooth as can be with ANA. While Leo didn't really watch movies on the console this time about, instead he played his switch and piano in Garageband.🇬🇧 Escaping the humidity of Japan has been nice, but it's been 31 degrees during the day here as well. And it hasn't rained in a month, so parks that are usually full of green grass are brown. The mornings are still glorious. We went to the Diana…

📍 Three Uncles Tasty noodles and rice with porkLocation: London, Greater London, United KingdomComment by email

📍 Marylebone Green Playground Perfect weather Location: London, Greater London, United KingdomComment by email

📍 Science Museum Playing games before visiting the actual museum.Location: London, Greater London, United KingdomComment by email

📍 Hyde Park Location: London, Greater London, United KingdomComment by email

Regents Park jet lag runLovely to run in cool and low humidity situations. Saw some foxes too 🦊Comment by email 5.0km 34.7min 14.7m climbed avg bpm